"Frozen"
Dedicated to William
Alucard/Integra Pairing
How odd it was. He had been in service to Sir Integra for about four months now; but had had yet to see the child actually play as one her age should. It wasn't necessarily something that bothered him. In fact,, he found himself to be almost proud in the way the young one shunned all activities that could be considered fun to others in favor of paperwork! The mentality of an old soul was what she had ... Her father had done well in teaching her.
Perhaps it was this very fact that caused such fascination with her on this evening. During the day, snow had begun to tumble from the heavens to coat the landscape around the Hellsing Manor. It was a normal occurrence, and one he paid little mind to this days. However, it sudden took on a new life when he saw that tiny figure bundled in white emerged from the ancestral home of the Hellsing family. Her small form had been bundled up in a warm white coat lined with an elegant fur that Walter had purchased for her during one of his shopping trips. Gloves of a matching color adorned her frail hands, as did a soft scarf twisted around her neck.
Alucard may have been prone to mistake the identity of this snow bunny as someone other than his master, but the silver cross fastened over that all-too-important jugular confirmed it was, indeed, Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing.
He watched with interest from the shadows as the little girl made her way out into the elaborate gardens that belonged to her. A shame she so rarely had a chance to visit them. The white clad figure made her rounds before, at last, finding an untainted area of snow. She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching before, at last, her body was flopped down into it.
Arms and legs worked in unison as a rarely seen smile tugged upon her pink lips. After a moment of the repeated action she rose to her feet, being care that her snow boots would not disturb the image of an angel etched into the ground. With a jump, she was able to turn back and see her handiwork. She even let a laugh escape her!
Oh, how he enjoyed to watch this! To see his master break from her cold demeanor was a treat. Red coat fluttered gently as he emerged from the darkness into the world of purity. It gave him an odd sense of pleasure to know that in all of this untainted world of frozen beauty, he was the dark beacon. He swiftly came up behind his young master, his lips behind lowered to her ear.
"Are we having fun, little girl?" He asked with a chuckle. The reaction he got was not one he had expected. She turned to face him with that look of anger before she went running back towards the manor.
Her hurried escape from him without so much as a scolding was a mystery to him until he learned from Walter later that evening that the girl had escaped from her office in order to go outside. That she had actually pushed aside her work to just enjoy the snow as any other child would want to.
He would carry this memory with him throughout the next ten years. Never again would he see Integra deviate from her holy mission as the leader of the Hellsing Organization. That smile he had seen on that day was nothing more than a ghost in the back of his mind. But ... some nights when the snow was falling from the sky and Integra was buried within her office, a martyr to her family's legacy, he could swear he heard the laugh of that little girl.